Dan Olinger

"If the Bible is true, then none of our fears are legitimate, none of our frustrations are permanent, and none of our opposition is significant."

Dan Olinger

Chair, Division of Biblical Studies & Theology,

Bob Jones University

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Integrity Matters, Part 1: Two Commandments

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Everybody knows about the Ten Commandments. Not everybody knows what they are, and nobody obeys them perfectly, but the term is pervasive as an expression for Doing Good.

It’s been often observed that the commandments come on two tablets—not just literally (Ex 31.18), but logically as well. Commandments 1-4 address our relationship with God, answering to the Great Commandment (“Thou shalt love the Lord thy God,” Mt 22.36-38), while commandments 5-10 address our relationship with other humans, answering to the Second Commandment (“Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself,” Mt 22.39). And within that second table, many have noticed that the last 4 seem to be related:

14 You shall not commit adultery.
15 You shall not steal.
16 You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor.
17 You shall not covet your neighbor’s house; you shall not covet your neighbor’s wife, or male or female slave, or ox, or donkey, or anything that belongs to your neighbor (Ex 20.14-17).

Adultery and coveting (especially coveting your neighbor’s wife) seem of a piece, bookending the prohibitions on stealing and lying, or “bearing false witness.”

I’d like to spend a post or two on these last-mentioned two as connected. Stealing, I’d suggest, is really just a form of lying—which is why the two so often travel together.

Stealing, as we all know, is taking something that doesn’t belong to you. We know instinctively that that’s wrong, but it’s worth our time to think systematically through the reasons why.

  • Like all the other sins listed in the Second Table, stealing is failing to love your neighbor, since you’re depriving him of something that he has earned:

8 Owe no one anything, except to love one another; for the one who loves another has fulfilled the law. 9 The commandments, “You shall not commit adultery; You shall not murder; You shall not steal; You shall not covet”; and any other commandment, are summed up in this word, “Love your neighbor as yourself.” 10 Love does no wrong to a neighbor; therefore, love is the fulfilling of the law (Ro 13.8-10).

  • But when you do that, you’re engaging in a whole list of lies. You’re saying that
    • Your neighbor is not in fact in the image of God, deserving your respect;
    • What you’ve taken really and rightly belongs, or should belong, to you;
    • God, your abundantly generous heavenly Father, hasn’t given you everything you need;
    • You need more—and God doesn’t care enough about that need to give you what you need in a legitimate way;
    • If you’re a believer, you’re saying that you haven’t taken off the cloak of ungodliness and put on the cloak of righteousness (Ep 4.17-25). You’re saying that God hasn’t fundamentally changed you from your unbelieving days. As a believer, you’re living as though you’re still by nature a child of wrath (Ep 2.3). That’s like being a square circle—it doesn’t make any sense at all.

So when you steal, you’re lying, in multiple and obvious ways. It’s no surprise, then, that Paul mentions both together:

25 So then, putting away falsehood, let all of us speak the truth to our neighbors, for we are members of one another. … 28 Thieves must give up stealing; rather let them labor and work honestly with their own hands, so as to have something to share with the needy (Ep 4.25-28).

Note his requirement that thieves work “honestly” with their hands, in contrast with the lying way they had “worked” before.

When you steal, you’re not telling the truth, and you’re not living the truth. And there’s nothing good down that road. Since you don’t like it when other people do that to you, how can you possibly excuse it in yourself? 

In the next post I’d like to look at an incident of lying and stealing in the Bible.

Photo by Sean Foster on Unsplash

Change, Part 6: Obedience

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Part 1: Introduction | Part 2: Sovereign, Attentive, and Good | Part 3: Promise Keeper | Part 4: Present | Part 5: Trust

The second of three prescriptions God has for Joshua in a time of momentous change is as straightforward as the first:

being careful to act in accordance with all the law that my servant Moses commanded you; do not turn from it to the right hand or to the left, so that you may be successful wherever you go (Jos 1.7b).

2. Obedience

God began by asking for Joshua’s trust; now he asks for his obedience.

As commentator David M. Howard writes, “It is striking that God’s instructions here to Joshua are not about military matters, given that Joshua and the Israelites faced many battles ahead. However, the keys to his success were spiritual, directly related to the degree of his obedience to God. The keys to Joshua’s success were the same as those for a king: being rooted in God’s word rather than depending upon military might (Deut 17:14–20, esp. vv. 16, 18–19)” (Joshua, New American Commentary, 85).

Obedience is a major theme in the book of Joshua. We shouldn’t be surprised that God peppers the book with reminders of the importance of obedience, given that the Israelites had just spent 40 years in the wilderness in response to their faithless refusal to enter the Land from Kadesh-Barnea (Num 14), and that before that, from the beginning of their time in the wilderness, they had complained of their circumstances and expressed doubt over the Lord’s character and motives (Ex 16.1-3). At the close of Moses’ ministry, God had predicted that this well-established pattern of disobedience would continue under the leadership of Moses’ successor (Dt 31.16).

As indeed it did. Immediately after the initial miraculous victory at Jericho, the disobedience of Achan led to death and defeat at Ai.

God’s plan was for them to do the hard work of taking the land. He would intervene spectacularly on their behalf as they crossed the Jordan (by parting it before them, Jos 3), surrounded Jericho (by collapsing the walls, Jos 6), and battled the southern Canaanite confederacy (by causing the sun to stand still, Jos 10), but He begins with their obedience.

And in turn, there’s a reason that he has asked for their faith before asking for their obedience. They wouldn’t step into the raging Jordan unless they believed that he would part the waters; they wouldn’t march in military aggression against the walled city of Jericho unless they believed that he would collapse the walls; they wouldn’t go into a days-long battle against the southern Canaanite confederacy unless they believed that he would make it possible for them to mop up the scene while there was still daylight.

Trust, then obey.

What of us?

We don’t have a land to conquer; we have other, different commands to obey. We are called to be ambassadors, representing him faithfully in the midst of unbelief, taking the Good News to a sometimes unwilling, even aggressively hostile audience, with weapons that are spiritual, not carnal, and with the very confidence and grace of the Son.

But we have advantages Israel didn’t have. “Christians under the new covenant have the two-fold advantage that Christ satisfied the law’s demands and promises (Mt. 5:17; Rom. 3:21–26) and through the Spirit has written the law upon their hearts (2 Cor. 3:3–6; Heb. 8:7–13; 10:15–18)” (Gordon McConville, New Bible Commentary, 237). Our obedience to the Great Commission is spiritually empowered by the Commissioner himself. He has rendered us fit for the task and inclined to obey—in even the hard things. “Like Joshua, Christians do not succeed spiritually because they obey God’s Law. Instead, God through Christ enables them to have victory over sin” (Richard Hess, The Tyndale OT Commentary). 

So it turns out that the old children’s chorus expresses just exactly what’s called for from us adults: “trust, and obey.”

And we can do it.

Photo by Martin Adams on Unsplash

Change, Part 5: Trust

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Part 1: Introduction | Part 2: Sovereign, Attentive, and Good | Part 3: Promise Keeper | Part 4: Present

Having reminded Joshua of whom he serves, thereby assuring him of success through changing times, God now outlines his expectations: how should Joshua respond in this potentially unstable situation?

He presents Joshua with a “to do” list of just three items, all of which make perfect sense and strike us an eminently reasonable.

1.      Trust

6 Be strong and courageous; for you shall put this people in possession of the land that I swore to their ancestors to give them. 7 Only be strong and very courageous … (Jos 1.6-7).

OK, I grant you that there’s no mention of the words trust, believe, or faith in there. Fair enough.

But if he’s going to stiffen his spine and lead 600,000 men into battle against people who are fighting for their homes—and who offer their own babies as fiery sacrifices to persuade their gods to give them bounteous crops—then he’s going to have to believe what the Lord has just told him—and what he tells him again in this sentence: that God’s power and presence is going to give him victory in all the coming battles.

That’s faith. That’s trust.

You don’t charge into the lion’s mouth unless you trust the lion tamer’s power over the lion. If Joshua allows his fear of failure—the consequences for which are extreme—then he’s telling God that he doesn’t believe him. As one commentator notes, “Fear and anxiety are tantamount to unbelief.”

It’s worth noting, I think, that God speaks of Israel’s “inheriting” the land (KJV NKJV ESV NIV) that he had promised them. You don’t “inherit” something by stealing it or taking it by force; you “inherit” it legally, because it is rightfully yours. “The earth is the Lord’s, and the fulness thereof” (Ps 24.1 KJV)—or in modern parlance, the earth and everything in it belongs to God. The land of Canaan doesn’t belong to the Canaanites; it belongs to God, who can bequeath it to whichever heir he chooses. And he chooses Joshua and the people of Israel, Abraham’s seed.

Similarly, we have an inheritance that is ours by right and that we shall certainly receive. Peter writes,

3 Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! By his great mercy he has given us a new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, 4 and into an inheritance that is imperishable, undefiled, and unfading, kept in heaven for you, 5 who are being protected by the power of God through faith for a salvation ready to be revealed in the last time (1P 1.3-5).

We need not fear any current chaos, personal, familial, civic, national, or global. Our inheritance is “imperishable, undefiled, and unfading, kept in heaven” for us. Our Father is infinitely more reliable than the governor, the banker, the taxman. Our inheritance is sure.

And so Peter can immediately say,

6 In this you rejoice, even if now for a little while you have had to suffer various trials, 7 so that the genuineness of your faith—being more precious than gold that, though perishable, is tested by fire—may be found to result in praise and glory and honor when Jesus Christ is revealed (1P 1.6-7).

Trials do not terrorize God’s people; they are merely a mechanism for removing impurities in us and rendering us clearer trophies of his grace, more effective ambassadors of his kingdom.

Trusting God brings a calm confidence that astounds the terrorized. Sometimes they think we’re stupid; sometimes they think we’re crazy; sometimes they think we’re insufficiently concerned and therefore unloving.

No. None of those things. Calm, confident, trusting in the good plan of a strong and kind heavenly Father.

Photo by Martin Adams on Unsplash

Change, Part 4: Present

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Part 1: Introduction | Part 2: Sovereign, Attentive, and Good | Part 3: Promise Keeper 

God encourages Joshua in a time of great change and potential instability by telling him three things about himself. We’ve looked at the first two in the two previous posts. It remains now to note God’s final assurance to Joshua from his own character.

3. God Remains with His People

No one shall be able to stand against you all the days of your life. As I was with Moses, so I will be with you; I will not fail you or forsake you (Jos 1.5).

It may seem odd that God starts with the conclusion or the result rather than the basis. He assures Joshua that his enemies will fall before him; no one will be able to stand against him.

As we’ve noted, this is not because of Joshua’s skill with a sword, or the strategic and tactical depth of experience in his battlefield commanders. This army has had some battle experience—just recently—but they’re still fairly new at it. Further, they’re about to attack the Canaanites on their home turf, something that puts them at a disadvantage in both tactics and morale.

So why this outrageously optimistic outcome?

God is with him, and he will be with him uninterruptedly throughout the campaign. As he was with Moses, so he will be with Joshua.

We’ve noted before that God is the kind of person who keeps his promises. He’s going to keep the promise of the Land, made to the patriarchs and most recently to Moses, faithfully and powerfully. He doesn’t get tired or distracted or called away on something more urgent—in fact, there is no “away” with the omnipresent God.

The Hebrew word translated “fail” here (“leave” in the NKJV, ESV, and NIV) speaks of loosening the hand and letting something drop. It’s used that way in Ezekiel 21.7—

And when they say to you, “Why do you moan?” you shall say, “Because of the news that has come.” Every heart will melt and all hands will be feeble, every spirit will faint and all knees will turn to water. See, it comes and it will be fulfilled, says the Lord God.

The hand loosens. The weapon falls. The battle is lost.

When my daughters were still living at home, occasionally I would be watching a football game on a Saturday afternoon while lying on the couch. Because there are multiple games on, I’d have the remote in my hand, ready to check on another game when the commercial break comes to this one. Well, it’s Saturday afternoon, after lunch, and I’m lying on the couch, and you know what happens.

I doze off.

My daughters, who aren’t interested in the game and would rather watch something else, would gently ease the remote out of my hand and change the channel. At some point—maybe immediately, maybe a few minutes later, I’d wake up and say, “Hey! I was watching that!”

Indeed.

God’s hands don’t go limp on his people, either from lack of commitment or from exhaustion. God is there for Joshua and his army, keeping his promise to deliver them to the land, overwhelming their enemies certainly, faithfully, attentively, effortlessly.

He’s like that with us too.

As we noted in the previous post, he has made promises to us as well—more promises, in fact, than he made to Joshua. And it is impossible for him not to keep them, whether by forgetting or by becoming exhausted or by losing interest.

When everything around us is changing, God is not. He cannot violate his own character.

Interestingly, this promise to Joshua is quoted in the New Testament and applied to us in a specific context:

Keep your lives free from the love of money, and be content with what you have; for he has said, “I will never leave you or forsake you” (He 13.5).

Contentment in the midst of chaos is a powerful testimony to a solid foundation and a confident purpose. We have what we need. God is enough.

The next verse broadens the application:

 So we can say with confidence, “The Lord is my helper; I will not be afraid. What can anyone do to me?”  (He 13.6).

God’s promised presence dismisses fear of both the known and the unknown.

Blessed are those who have learned to acclaim you, LORD,
who walk in the light of your presence (Ps 89.15).

Photo by Martin Adams on Unsplash

Change, Part 3: Promise Keeper

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Part 1: Introduction | Part 2: Sovereign, Attentive, and Good

As we’ve seen, God is great, the great sovereign over his created order. He is able—and certain—to act on behalf of his people. How will he do that?

2. God keeps his promises.

As the narrative proceeds, God reminds Joshua that he has made promises to the people of Israel:

3 Every place that the sole of your foot will tread upon I have given to you, as I promised to Moses. 4 From the wilderness and the Lebanon as far as the great river, the river Euphrates, all the land of the Hittites, to the Great Sea in the west shall be your territory (Jos 1.3-4).

The Lord refers specifically to the promise he made to Moses (Dt 11.24), and through him to the people of Israel. And you’ll recall that even earlier, at the burning bush (Ex 3.8), God had commissioned Moses to bring his people out of Egypt “to a good and broad land, a land flowing with milk and honey.” And God prefaced that commission by identifying himself as “the God of your father, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob” (Ex 3.6). Why does he describe himself that way? clearly because he had made the same promise to the patriarchs, beginning with Abraham (Ge 12.7; cf 17.8), then Isaac (Ge 26.4) and then Jacob (Ge 28.13).

God is the kind of person who 1) remembers his promises and then 2) keeps them. It had been about 600 years since God made the original promise to Abraham; for more than 400 of those years Abraham’s descendants had been in Egypt—not in the Land God had promised them—and for most of those 400 they had been slaves.

But God had not forgotten; he had not reneged; he had not failed to keep the Promise.

One of the evidences of sovereignty is that you’re not in a hurry. If you see the White Rabbit hopping madly by, crying, “I’m late! I’m late!” then you know that he doesn’t have his life under control at that moment.

And so now, six centuries of providentially directed history later, it’s time—time to fulfill the promise, time to give Abraham’s seed the land.

As I’ve noted, you and I are not Israel, and we have no claim to the land from the river of Egypt to the Euphrates.

But if God is the kind of person who remembers and keeps his promises, then he remembers and keeps his promises to us as well.

And there are hundreds of them, more than I can list here.

But there a few that might be profitable for us to recall here where we find ourselves in history.

Some apply to us as individual believers.

  • “Those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake will find it” (Mt 16.25).
  • “This is indeed the will of my Father, that all who see the Son and believe in him may have eternal life; and I will raise them up on the last day” (Jn 6.40).
  • “And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and will take you to myself, so that where I am, there you may be also” (Jn 14.3).
  • “God is faithful, and he will not let you be tested beyond your strength, but with the testing he will also provide the way out so that you may be able to endure it” (1Co 10.13).
  • “The one who began a good work among you will bring it to completion by the day of Jesus Christ” (Php 1.6).
  • “I will never leave you or forsake you” (He 13.5).
  • “It is God’s will that by doing right you should silence the ignorance of the foolish” (1P 2.15).
  • “Let those suffering in accordance with God’s will entrust themselves to a faithful Creator, while continuing to do good” (1P 4.19).

And others apply to us as Christ’s body, the church, in corporate unity.

  • “I will build my church, and the gates of Hades will not prevail against it” (Mt 16.18).
  • “Never avenge yourselves, but leave room for the wrath of God; for it is written, ‘Vengeance is mine, I will repay, says the Lord’ ” (Ro 12.19).
  • “I will destroy the wisdom of the wise, and the discernment of the discerning I will thwart” (1Co 1.19).
  • “May the God of peace himself sanctify you entirely; and may your spirit and soul and body be kept sound and blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ.The one who calls you is faithful, and he will do this” (1Th 5.23-24).
  • “All who want to live a godly life in Christ Jesus will be persecuted” (2Ti 3.12).

He remembers all of these. And he will keep them.

Photo by Martin Adams on Unsplash

Change, Part 2: Sovereign, Attentive, and Good

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Part 1: Introduction

I’ve proposed using the Old Testament account of Joshua’s succession of Moses as a pattern for us as we face a rapidly and significantly changing world. I suppose I should justify that.

Of course there are differences between our situation and that of Joshua 1:

  • What we’re facing is not just a change of leadership.
  • We’re not emerging from a lifetime of stability in leadership.
  • We’re not Israel. (And no, this isn’t about dispensationalism. 🙂 )
  • God hasn’t given special revelation as to who our leaders should be.

But there are also similarities:

  • We are a people of God. (I’m speaking here of the church, not the USA or any other political entity.)
  • We are in covenant with God, whose covenant loyalty (Heb hesed, steadfast, loving loyalty) “endures forever” (Ps 136 and often elsewhere).
  • We are in a time of significant change.

And as Paul tells us (1Co 10.6), the Old Testament accounts were written as examples for us.

So what did God say to Joshua in his time of transition? And what do those words tell us about God and His plans for us? In this series I’d like to suggest three statements about God in his words to Joshua, and three things he asks us to do in response.

1.      God is great, and he is in charge.

In fact, he is in charge because he is great.

God says to Joshua,

My servant Moses is dead. Now proceed to cross the Jordan, you and all this people, into the land that I am giving to them, to the Israelites (Jos 1.2).

God begins by calling Moses “my servant.” Now, Moses was the most powerful human these people had ever known. He had faced down Pharaoh and forced him to let his Israelite slaves go. He had held his rod over the Red Sea and parted it, allowing the millions of Israelites to pass through safely and then drowning the most powerful army in the world. For 40 years he had provided for their needs and answered their questions in circumstances that could have turned fatal on them in days. He had led them militarily through hostile territory east of the Jordan.

And he’s just a servant? How powerful must his master and commander be?!

By implication, Joshua—and all the people—are also God’s servants, who must obey His orders. And to make the point, he immediately gives them an order: “Proceed to cross the Jordan.”

The narrative will later tell us (Jos 3.15) that the Jordan is at flood stage during this season. I’ve seen significant rivers that have swelled out of their banks during a flood, and it’s a frightening sight. Your first instinct is not to step out into it. Again, we’ll soon learn that when the people obey, the river will withdraw from them, just as the Red Sea had a generation earlier (Jos 3.16).

So God had graciously already provided them with a basis for courage. He wasn’t asking for blind faith and slavish obedience; he was gently saying, “We’ve been through this before; you know I can bring you through.”

That was 1400 years before the birth of Jesus. How much more evidence do we, living more than 3400 years later, have of God’s power, faithfulness, and tender care? What other evidences do we find in the rest of the Old Testament, the New Testament, and the lives of God’s people in all the years since the last apostle laid down his pen for the last time?

Why are we unsettled? Why are we afraid? Why are we frustrated and angry, lashing out and calling names?

Why do we post things like “Joe Biden wasn’t elected. He was installed. Like a toilet.”?!

What kind of weak, inattentive God do we think we have?

God will stop the flow of the Jordan the moment the priests step into it (Jos 3.15-16). He can do that; he’s in charge. This is the God we serve. 

No, God doesn’t always stop the flow of rivers he asks us to cross. But he can. That’s the point. And he will take us through, flood stage or dry riverbed. 

Photo by Martin Adams on Unsplash

Change, Part 1: Introduction

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I hear a lot of talk—and a lot of fear and anger and frustration—about social change. Things aren’t the way they used to be, and a lot of people find the situation deeply troubling.

Things always change; that’s a fact of life. Most of us have the experience of going back to a familiar place—a house, a school, a church, an employer—and noticing that while the physical plant is largely the same, we no longer know any of the people. The disconnect is jarring.

But broader cultural changes, driven by technology, by societal mores, by artistic expression, by a thousand other things, are even more unsettling. When the whole world changes, there are no familiar places to go back to.

The sense of dislocation is exacerbated by the indisputable fact that the pace of change is accelerating. I realized a few years back that when my father was born in 1918 in a homestead ranch cabin on the Western frontier, daily life was largely unchanged from life in Jesus’ time—or even Abraham’s. You got water from a well or a river; you grew your own food, using animals to do the most difficult physical labor; you cooked that food over a fire; you walked or rode carts pulled by animals; you did your excretory business in a hole in the ground a little ways off from the house.

Dad lived to be 90. In that one lifespan, he saw pretty much everything that’s changed since the ancient world. He rode in an automobile; he helped build highways; he rode and worked on trains, both coal-fired and diesel electric; he helped build Grand Coulee Dam; he learned to fly airplanes; he worked in newspaper publishing from the days of hot lead Linotype to digital; and with a little help from his son, he navigated on Google Earth to see the old homestead on Sandy Creek, just upriver from Salmon, Idaho.

All in one lifetime.

And in the mere decade and a half since, what social, cultural, medical, and financial changes have occurred!

Some people feel like we’re accelerating headlong toward a precipice, uncontrolled and uncontrollably.

And on the heels of such thoughts inevitably come fear, despair, desperation, rage.

My brethren, these things ought not so to be.

We forget—so easily—that there is providence: that there is a God, who is mighty and wise and loving, who directs all things—even things like the Babylonian and Roman destructions of Jerusalem, even things like wars and pandemics and famines and corruption as deep as we can imagine—he directs all things to his own good ends and the benefit of his people.

Nothing is headlong; nothing is uncontrolled; nothing is cause for existential despair.

And if nothing on such a macroscopic scale should bring despair, then what about those narrower, more personal changes and challenges? Should we lose hope when our own lives take difficult turns, change in unexpected, undesirable, and indecipherable ways?

There are many accounts of significant changes in the biblical narrative. I suppose the death of Jesus was the most significant—and even there we find that it was not only part of God’s plan, but it was in fact at the very center of that plan. We wonder, here in hindsight, why those thick-headed disciples just didn’t get it.

Of the many other examples, I’d like to focus on just one.

Moses was a leader for the ages. Specially selected (Ex 3) and then empowered by God, he brought the mightiest ruler in the world of that day to his knees through a series of miraculous plagues, then organized perhaps 2 million people for travel, then parted the Red Sea, brought water out of a desert rock, and saw to their organized government under unimaginably contrary conditions during 40 years of wandering the desert.

And then, over a century old, he brought them through hostile territories to the edge of Canaan, the promised land. The new generation and the new army were about to take on the Canaanite peoples who had so frightened their parents.

Time to get busy and get this thing done.

But wait.

Moses isn’t coming. In fact, he’s dead.

The new leader is Joshua, someone with no chief executive experience, with little military command experience.

How is this going to work?

I’d like to spend a few posts thinking about how God handled this transition.

Photo by Martin Adams on Unsplash

The Eye of the Storm, Part 2

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Part 1

Let’s take a closer look at Psalm 11, where we find ourselves faced with a stark choice as we deal with troublous times.

Stanza 1 includes verses 1-3. David’s advisors, having done a SWOT analysis, present him with what appears to be the only logical choice: “Run! Run for your life!”

Flee as a bird to your mountain!

And they give solid reasons: you have enemies, and they are preparing for action, which includes hidden threats to your very life. With weapons. Bad ones.

For, lo, the wicked bend their bow, they make ready their arrow upon the string, that they may privily shoot at the upright in heart.

They also note the consequences of inaction.

If the foundations be destroyed, what can the righteous do?!

This is, as we say these days, an “existential threat.” The consequences are world-shaking. What we’re facing is the end of all we know and love. Oblivion.

That’s their case.

Now David presents his.

I note that he doesn’t deny the truth of their facts. He’s not careless, disengaged, distracted, or apathetic. “There are no threats; no one’s after me; you people are a bunch of paranoid freaks.”

No. Accepting their major premise—that there’s a real threat out there—he presents rather a different perspective on it.

He brings in a variable that they haven’t mentioned. There is another actor on the battlefield; his name is YHWH, the ever-present and unchanging one, the one who keeps covenants. David views this God from three different perspectives.

His Person

David begins his response with a statement about who God is, what he is like:

The LORD is in his holy temple, the LORD’S throne is in heaven (v 4).

What is he like? Well, for starters, he has a temple—he’s God—and it’s “holy,” or unique. He’s not like everybody else; he’s in a class by himself. Adding him to the scene changes everything.

Second, he has a throne. That means he’s a king. And if he’s holy, then he’s not like any other king. He’s bigger, and stronger, and smarter, and better at kinging than any other king.

There’s a third factor. That throne is in heaven. That means, at least, that he’s above the battlefield and has a broader and clearer perspective on what’s going on down below. The high ground is militarily significant for many reasons, and one of them is the advantage that its perspective gives for strategic planning.

And heaven, of course, is not just any ordinary high ground. It’s the highest ground of all, the home of him who never loses.

So this is who the fearful have left out of their equation. A fairly significant oversight.

His Perspective

David also considers where God is looking—where his attention is focused. He actually bookends his thoughts—what scholars call an inclusio—with this idea.

His eyes behold, his eyelids try, the children of men (v 4).

His countenance doth behold the upright (v 7).

This powerful God, this master general, this unmatchable force, is paying attention. His eyes are focused like a laser on his people; he knows what’s going on, and his hands are poised on the armrests of his throne as he prepares to move against any and all threats to them. His silence is evidence not of distance or distraction, but of concentration.

The storm in which we find ourselves has an eye, a place of calm. And the eye belongs to God.

His Plan

God has plans for every actor on the battlefield.

God’s plan for the righteous is to strengthen him not by avoiding the exertion of battle, but by enduring it.

The Lord trieth the righteous (v 5).

We all know that athletes don’t become great by lying on the couch. They become great by building endurance through physical challenges—wind sprints, road work, scrimmages seemingly without end. And they build dexterity and skills by constant repetition at the blocking sled or doing layups or punching the timing bag.

They get tired.

But they get great.

That’s God’s loving plan for us through the dark days, through the frightening challenges (Ro 5.3-5).

God also has plans for those who threaten his people.

The wicked and him that loveth violence his soul hateth. 6 Upon the wicked he shall rain snares, fire and brimstone, and an horrible tempest: this shall be the portion of their cup (vv 5b-6).

They won’t prevail. They won’t even survive.

The foundations, in the end, cannot be destroyed. The battle may well be strenuous, and we may well pick up some Purple Hearts, or maybe even a Congressional Medal of Honor, along the way.

But the outcome is certain.

Fear not.

Photo by NASA. That’s Tropical Cyclone Eloise coming ashore in Mozambique on January 22, 2021.

The Eye of the Storm, Part 1

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I’ve been meditating lately in Psalm 11, as part of my effort this year to memorize a few key Psalms. (So far, 1, 2, 8, 11, and 14; next is 19, d.v.)

Psalm 11 is most well known for its third verse: “If the foundations be destroyed, what can the righteous do?”

I’ve heard that verse used as a call to action against evil—typically, social or political action against evil policy proposals, national or regional. Some years ago I even spoke at a Christian-school conference that had chosen that verse as its theme.

But I’d like to suggest that those friends and others have taken this verse to say the very opposite of the intended meaning.

Here’s the whole Psalm—

1  In the LORD put I my trust: how say ye to my soul, “Flee as a bird to your mountain! 2 For, lo, the wicked bend their bow, they make ready their arrow upon the string, that they may privily shoot at the upright in heart. 3 If the foundations be destroyed, what can the righteous do?!”

4 The LORD is in his holy temple, the LORD’S throne is in heaven: his eyes behold, his eyelids try, the children of men. 5 The LORD trieth the righteous: but the wicked and him that loveth violence his soul hateth. 6 Upon the wicked he shall rain snares, fire and brimstone, and an horrible tempest: this shall be the portion of their cup. 7 For the righteous LORD loveth righteousness; his countenance doth behold the upright.

I’ve modified the punctuation of the KJV text just a little: I’ve added quotation marks; I’ve changed the question mark at the end of verse 1 to an exclamation point; and I’ve added an exclamation point to the question mark at the end of verse 3.

It appears to me that the KJV translators viewed the quotation as ending in verse 1; that’s why they put the question mark there. (Note that there was no punctuation in the original manuscripts or in the early copies. All punctuation in the Bible is a later editorial decision.) What basis do I have for extending the quotation through verse 3?

Well, the first consideration in any such decision should always be the context. The contrast between verses 3 and 4 indicates a significant change of perspective—which is why all the major English translations that show paragraph breaks put one there, and all those that include quotation marks end the quotation at the end of verse 3. The fear and frustration expressed in verse 3 seems much more in tune with the quotation in verse 1 than the response in verse 4.

Since it’s always a good idea to run your ideas past experts, the next step is to check the commentaries. Of the technical commentaries I have at hand, Faussett, Keil & Delitzsch, Lange, Kidner (Tyndale), Futato (Cornerstone), Longman (Tyndale), and Motyer (New BC) all agree that the major break is between 3 and 4—in other words, that verse 3 belongs with verse 1.

Thus the psalm consists of two paragraphs, or more properly, two stanzas. In the first, David announces his life principle (“In the Lord do I put my trust”) and then questions those who question him. The words “what can the righteous do?!” are not David’s, but those of his questioners, his self-appointed advisors, who see the world as a much more frightening place than he does. They are words of fear, not of faith.

The second stanza is David’s reply to his fearful advisors. He answers calmly and logically—theologically—and gives reasons for his faith. The reasons are rooted in God’s person, his perspective, and his plan.

And in the face of that, the alarmed have nothing more to say.

I think this Psalm is timely for these days.

In the next post we’ll take a closer look at the words of both the fearful and the faithful. And then we’ll get to pick a side.

Part 2

Photo by NASA. That’s Tropical Cyclone Eloise coming ashore in Mozambique on January 22, 2021.

“What Do You want from Me, God?” Part 3: Mercy

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Part 1: Introduction | Part 2: Justice

He has told you, O man, what is good;
And what does the Lord require of you
But to do justice, to love mercy,
And to walk humbly with your God? (Mic 6.8)

Love mercy.

This is a big word.

You can tell that because the English versions translate it with different English words:

  • Mercy (KJV, NKJV, GW, NLT)
  • Kindness (ASV, NASB95, ESV, NIV, LEB, RSV)
  • Compassion (AMP)
  • Faithfulness (CSB, NET)
  • Love (GNT)
  • “Be compassionate and loyal in your love” (MSG)

In the OT, it’s a significant character trait of God, which the KJV translates multiple ways in its 231 occurrences:

  • Favor
  • Goodliness
  • Goodness
  • Kindness
  • Lovingkindness
  • Marvellous
  • Mercy
  • Pity

In fact, it’s the most common biblical statement about God: “His mercy endures forever.” 

One scholar defined the Hebrew word this way:

“A beneficent action performed, in the context of a deep and enduring commitment between two persons or parties, by one who is able to render assistance to the needy party who in the circumstances is unable to help him—or herself.”

One of my theology professors put it more concisely:

“Steadfast, loving loyalty.”

Several concepts going on here:

  • There’s a relationship between the two parties.
  • This relationship is grounded in love.
  • The person showing “mercy” is fiercely devoted to being loyal to the relationship, no matter what.
  • This loyalty issues in action that benefits the person in need.

Looks like the way The Message renders it, as noted above, is the best of the bunch: “Be compassionate and loyal in your love.”

I suppose that you could say, then, that “mercy” is the opposite of apathy.

  • It’s the opposite of saying, “Sorry, but I have other things to do right now.”
  • It’s the opposite of saying, “It’s your own fault.”
  • It’s the opposite of saying, “I told you so.”

It’s living out James 2:15-17—

15  If a brother or sister is without clothing and in need of daily food, 16 and one of you says to them, “Go in peace, be warmed and be filled,” and yet you do not give them what is necessary for their body, what use is that? 17 Even so faith, if it has no works, is dead, being by itself.

We’re to love mercy.

We’re to look for problems that others are facing, and to commit ourselves to helping them solve those problems, no matter how much time and energy and money it takes, because we love them.

I’m not naturally like that, and I suspect you aren’t either.

I find it helpful to meditate on the ways God has shown this kind of loving commitment to me.

Someone has said that the fact that God has forgiven us obligates us to forgive others—for how could anyone have sinned against us more grievously than we have sinned against God?

Indeed.

How could we possibly show “mercy” to someone else more purely and deeply and intensely and completely than God has shown mercy to us?

May we all pay attention—on the prowl, searching, seeking for people who need help—and render help in ways that are sacrificial and truly effective.

And may we love it.

Part 4: A Humble Walk

Photo by Luis Quintero on Unsplash